Jeff Bezos Isn’t Obligated to Subsidize the Losses of the Washington Post

National Review Online

Friday, February 06, 2026

 

This week, the media world recoiled in shock at the news of massive layoffs at the Washington Post, the primary newspaper of the nation’s capital and once a fierce competitor of the New York Times for primacy in the world of print news. Even those prepared by over a week’s advance warning were surprised at the extent of the cuts: Nearly one-third of the Post’s staff was laid off, including the entire sports and books departments as well as large swaths of the international and metro desks.

 

Whatever the longer-term future holds for the Washington Post, it has opted for retrenchment in the short run. The Post’s coverage horizons have undeniably contracted, and in its present state it is neither fish nor fowl as a newspaper: Having dropped both its aspirations to be a leader in national and global news coverage, as well as any local focus on the D.C./Maryland/Virginia metro region, it will need to decide what kind of paper it wants to be — and what kind of readership it seeks to cultivate. That will require a new identity.

 

But by the same token, the near-universal hysteria among media commentators about the Post’s layoffs is curiously misplaced. The cries are utterly predictable and notable only for their monolithic nature: Owner Jeff Bezos is truly to blame, not only for his “sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump” (in the words of ex-Post editor Marty Baron) but for his unwillingness to pay for these journalists to write work that goes unread. Why can’t one of the world’s richest men just continue to stroke checks to the Post’s reporters and be content with losing money? Hidden behind the complaint is the implicit idea that the Washington Post is a “public good” of a higher sort — like a waterworks or highway system.

 

It is not. Now is not the time to dissect the Washington Post’s various strategic mistakes. A proper accounting would begin during Baron’s editorial tenure, including the decision to recast the paper as a “Democracy Dies in Darkness” organ of “Resistance” to the first Trump administration. Suffice it to say that while the paper has dug itself a very large hole in terms of branding, it is under no obligation to continue to bleed money to satisfy the pieties of people who clearly aren’t paying to read it. If they were, the Post would not be losing money.

 

Of course, as a publication with our own long-standing mission and point of view, we are grateful to have not only subscribers but also donors. If the Post wishes to go that route, it can do so. It was founded as a Democratic Party organ, after all, at its origin in 1877. But that would not only require forfeiting the pretense of Olympian impartiality; it would also require a clearly defined mission and donors who share it. That is not the property Bezos bought, and if he wishes to remake it into one with donations of his own money, there can hardly be a complaint if he prefers a mission that reflects the values he wishes to promote, rather than those of his erstwhile employees.

 

Without a doubt, it is deeply unfortunate when people lose their jobs — particularly in an industry where there are fewer than ever to go around. But Jeff Bezos is a businessman. He is not required to absorb limitless financial losses, particularly to maintain an institution whose ideological focus he feels to be misplaced. Demanding that he act otherwise reeks of entitlement.